


wreaths of white orchids

by coslyons



Category: Snow and Dirty Rain - Richard Siken
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Second Person, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-06 11:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16831750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coslyons/pseuds/coslyons
Summary: What makes a memory real? Is it the writing it down?





	wreaths of white orchids

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neuxue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/gifts).



> I'm not your assigned person, but when I saw that you requested Snow and Dirty Rain, I immediately had the idea for this fic pop into my head and so I wrote it.  
> This is more sensual than romantic or sexual. Sorry if that's too close to your DNW, but I figured that since I'm aroace myself, if it wasn't uncomfortable for me to write, then it should be fine for you to read? Apologies if I miscalculated.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, just how much you love this boy. You’ll glance over, nothing special, and suddenly it’s like your lungs can’t get enough air. He’s so damn beautiful here, in the place you built together. 

The apartment is a small studio in a shitty part of town. The bus that rattles down the street shakes the window panes every half hour like clockwork. He keeps plants out on the balcony, green and growing. Never buys you cut flowers if he can get live ones. He’s learned the language of flowers, which is slow and made of sunshine. A language for growing. Says he’s tired of watching things around him die. Wants to learn what it’s like to keep the beauty in the world, held in cupped hands. He holds you as he says this, like you’re another beautiful thing he wants to keep. 

You think that love might be a type of learning. You know that he likes strawberry ice cream the best and that he wanted to be an astronaut when he was a kid. You know that he grew up in a town that didn’t love him as much as he loved it. Dancing blackberry vine, sour red in the spring and darkens in late summer. Color you want to taste. You know that he is made of love despite all the things that have happened to him.

The first time you saw him, you thought he was something out of a storybook. A knight in shining armor, hands outstretched in kindness. Something too good to be real, blessed saint, gold leaf halo, something painted holy on the wall of a chapel.

This is not that kind of story. 

* * *

His skin tastes different at night. The moonlight salts his freckles. He melts so sweetly beneath you, and you can’t get enough. Salt and sugar both dissolve in water. Both are felt on the tongue. The line of his shoulder blade juts out from his back. You kiss the wing of it, with the tender ache of touches soft because just because they can be. In the dark, you go from hunger to hunger: his hand in yours, your face pressed in the hollow of his throat, his bare toes brushing against yours. When it’s dark, you feel like a ghost made of futures instead of pasts. You are still learning how to exist in your own body. You are still learning the shape of all your wants.

You’ve never had any practice loving someone like this, and you know that sooner or later it’s all going to catch up with you. Your father told you once that no one could ever love you the way you were. He told you that you were wrong and broken. You exist in the space between the leaving and the left, and it’s not a place for softness. You learned love doesn’t live in the negative space. Here, now, you don’t trust yourself to be this close to his skin. You want to reach out and swallow him whole. The depth of your hunger surprises you; you didn’t think it was possible to want someone like this. 

It feels vast, like some unseen ocean shifting beneath your skin. Sometimes, you think it’s too good to last.

* * *

The words pour out of his mouth like water. Like summer rain. The kind filled with light and made for growing. His voice is beautiful and soft, the words draping you in wreaths of white orchids.  _ The heart is a garden _ , he’d sing.  _ A garden to tend with the waters of love. _ You wonder who taught him the words, and grieve for something you never knew. 

Cruelty is a garden too, you know. You have to tend to it. Your father knew what it was to prune back the edges of hope. He took things away, cut at the edges of you until you became smaller than your skin. You know that you tend to the kind of casual cruelty your father scattered around him like salt in the earth. It’s the only thing your father ever gave you.

You’ve learned that forgiveness comes easier than apology. Think about it like mouths and teeth. Tender bleeding gums tucked away where no one can see. Is it worse to bleed or to leave someone else bleeding? 

* * *

When he gets sad, he cries. You don’t think you’re brave enough for grief anymore. You forgot how to cry. You never say  _ I love you _ when it matters. You have been sharp for too long, and you want to be soft for this boy.

This boy.

His uneven smile, teeth crooked and awkward. His back tiger-striped purple from the summer he turned fourteen. He says that nothing ever hurt as much as the feeling of all his bones shifting and growing inside of him. He says it with a lie tucked in the corner of his smile.

You know. You’ve seen his other scars: the once-broken finger that doesn’t bend right anymore, the twisted flesh of a badly healed rib, the jagged pale line cutting through his left eyebrow. You’ve seen the way he curls into himself, makes himself small even though he’s taller than you are. You saw the way he flinched during your first fight. Saw it enough that you don’t argue like that anymore. 

* * *

It’s a night too crystalline to last. One built for shattering. You know how stories like this end. They always end in heartbreak too heavy for one pair of hands; heartbreak that can only be carried in one pair of hands. The stars shiver outside your window, but here, now, you are warm. 

You may not love for always, but here, now, that’s enough. He, the hero, loves growing flowers on your balcony. He, the hero, loves.

In the morning, the sky is made of soft purple aching. You breathe. The day peeks through the broken blinds golden and lovely, liquid sunlight pouring over the curve of his ear. You press your nose to the back of his neck, and he smells like pencil shavings. Your hand curls into the shirt he wore to bed. You can feel the warmth of him under the thin fabric, and so you press closer. He stirs, shifts against you. His hand settles over yours, and you hold him as he sleeps again. 

They don’t tell stories about love like this, but you hold the words on your tongue until they spill out like water, like snow, like rain:  _ Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close to focus on... _

**Author's Note:**

> This a weird little pseudo-poem, but I had fun writing it, so I hope you enjoyed reading it.


End file.
